


Juncture

by bucketofbarnes



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Multi, The Normandy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-09
Updated: 2013-01-09
Packaged: 2017-11-24 06:55:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/631655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bucketofbarnes/pseuds/bucketofbarnes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of short Mass Effect oneshots.</p><p>Chapter 1: Shepard muses after meeting Kaidan on Horizon.<br/>Chapter 2: Kaidan looks back on his life, at the despair of discrimination, his experiences at BAaT and the heartbreak that was Rahna.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Mass Effect: Abandoned

**Author's Note:**

> Shepard muses after meeting Kaidan on Horizon.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shepard muses about meeting Kaidan on Horizon.

The feeling of despair and regret weighed heavily upon my heart as I slumped against the wall next to the airlock.

"You betrayed the Alliance, you betrayed me."

"Thinking you we're dead tore me apart."

I'm so sorry Kaidan.

Of all the things I could say, after two whole years, was 'Been too long Kaidan, how've you been?'

How the hell did I think he would react? Say 'Hey, I've been great. I watched you die John, and it was almost just like Virmire again. But yeah, I've been great.'

And the whole 'working for Cerberus thing'. Cerberus was an organisation of monsters, performing barbaric experiments that the Alliance wouldn't have even been able to dream of. Driving horror into each of our hearts. 

And I thought Kaidan would just accept that with a smile and come with me?

The thing that got me the most though, was the look of pain and hurt in his eyes as he stood before me. 

He had grieved for me for two years.

Out of all the things I could have done to make him suffer, I chose the worst. Out of a damned hero complex. 

I had left him with the same guilt he had had after Virmire, except I left him to deal with it by himself this time.

I had abandoned him.

I'm so, so sorry Kaidan.


	2. Mass Effect: Alienation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kaidan looks back on his life, at the despair of discrimination, his experiences at BAaT and the heartbreak that was Rahna.

Disgusting. Monster. Animal. Freak. I had been called all of these things and more.   
Much more.

This I never understood.

I was called these names, due to circumstances that had been completely out of my control...... I had not even been born yet.

I had been in the womb when I had been exposed to element zero. I remember that my parents always told me that I was not a freak. I was special, unique. But I was still human, and still had more heart than all of those bullies combined.

But sometimes it was hard to ignore the prejudice. 

"Biotics are dangerous, they'll kill us all out of insanity if we don't watch our backs!"

The parents telling their children to stay away from the strange little boy.

"Sarah, stay away from him! He's not safe!"

The bullying from the other kids.

"Out of the way freak!"

"Eww, I got biotic germs on me!"

"Don't get too close, it's probably contagious."

I was being blamed for something that could not possibly be my fault.

Even my own father sometimes looked at me like he wondered what the hell I was. If I was dangerous.

Relatives became even more distant, always finding excuses not to visit.

I had been alienated for all of my childhood, and when I finally got to BAaT, I found people like me. People who had been treated like the sticky stuff on the bottom of someone's shoe, all because they were different.

Rahna was the one I cared about the most. All the pent up affection that could have been used for the friends I had never had being used up on this one girl who made me feel.... Normal.

But after Vyrnnus died, that all changed. I was a monster again, a freak.

And worst of all,

A murderer.


	3. Mass Effect: Coming Apart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the first time in years, he thinks the world should just go and fuck themselves.  
> The Reapers don't matter.  
> Humanity doesn't matter.  
> All that matters is Kaidan, who is begging him not to leave him behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is MShenko, just to warn people who don't like that pairing.

Shepard's heart was coming apart. 

"Don't leave me behind."

He had never heard Kaidan sound so desperate, so thoroughly upset, and he had seen it also in those eyes, usually brown but turned yellow in the fire and blasts surrounding them.

His pale skin was marred with spatters of his own blood, making it look all the more paler and his dark hair matted with blood and grit from the rubble that had been falling around them.  
But he still looked beautiful to Shepard.

Garrus had stood behind him, the human's arm around his shoulder to support him, due to the fact that he was almost doubling over from a wound to his abdomen.

Shepard could have laughed if the situation he was in wasn't so grim. The soldier was so injured that he could barely walk WITH support, and yet he still wanted to follow the commander.

He had hated having to leave him, loving him with all of his heart despite their short time together. 

The first thorn in his heart was the hurt and desperation in Kaidan's eyes as he had screamed at them to go, the biotic's arm falling from where he had been reaching out to him weakly with a forlorn nature.

As he stood now, staring his death in the face, the child who had refused his help back in Earth, The Catalyst, standing next to him, all he wanted was to hold his lover in his arms. To wrap his smaller form up in his embrace and protect him from all harm, to never let him go.

Yet he would never see him again.

And as he raised his gun, to destroy the machine in front of him,

His heart broke.


End file.
